Dumb crooks, celebrities gone bad, unsolved mysteries, odd laws, and more—Strange Crime has plenty of stories that will make you ask yourself, “What could they possibly have been thinking?” This easily portable paperback book is ideal for readers on the go. Take it to school, to work, to jury duty!

    But this time, she didn’t show—and Christopher’s calls went unanswered. The police found what looked like a scene from a horror movie at their home. The backdoor kicked in. A bedroom splattered with blood. And a pregnant young woman violently stabbed to death.Could Christopher have murdered the woman he claimed to love? Or was the crime done by an intruder Angila had feared for weeks? Angila’s womanizing ex-husband, Richie Wilder, Jr., aimed detectives straight toward Christopher. The evidence, however, pointed squarely at Richie.Kindergarten teacher Cynthia Wilder thought her dreams had come true when she married Richie. But while her husband sat behind bars, Cynthia grew lonely. When she shared some disturbing details with a former lover, Cynthia finally revealed the truth behind the sinister plot to kill Angila Wilder. After four years of lies and deceit, the real story would shock a community to its very core …

    A KILLER PLOT Twenty-six-year-old actor Daniel Wozniak was unemployed, facing eviction, and deep in debt for his upcoming wedding. So he devised a diabolical plan: He asked his neighbor Sam Herr, a young war veteran, to help him move some things into the attic of an empty theater. There, Wozniak shot Herr twice in the head before taking his ATM card and cell phone. Hours later,Wozniak performed on stage with his fiancée in a local production of the musical Nine, convinced that he had gotten away with murder… A DRAMATIC LAST ACT Wozniak dismembered his victim’s body and hid the pieces. Then he lured Herr’s college friend Juri “Julie” Kibuishi to Herr’s apartment and shot her twice in the head. The police immediately declared Herr a prime suspect—just as Wozniak had planned. But when Herr was declared missing, and his ATM withdrawals led authorities to Wozniak at his bachelor party, the actor was forced to play the role of a lifetime in a shocking murder investigation that would be his greatest—and final—performance… Includes 8 pages of photos

    Intrigued and frustrated with a stalled music career, Thibodeau gradually became a follower and moved to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He remained there until April 19, 1993, when the compound was stormed and burnt to the ground after a 51-day standoff.In this book, Thibodeau explores why so many people came to believe that Koresh was divinely inspired. We meet the men, women, and children of Mt. Carmel. We get inside the day-to-day life of the community. Thibodeau is brutally honest about himself, Koresh, and the other members, and the result is a revelatory look at life inside a cult.But Waco is just as brutally honest when it comes to dissecting the actions of the United States government. Thibodeau marshals an array of evidence, some of it never previously revealed, and proves conclusively that it was our own government that caused the Waco tragedy, including the fires. The result is a memoir that reads like a thriller, with each page taking us closer to the eventual inferno.

    It was a merciless killing that stunned the small, trusting community where she lived, and devastated her close-knit family. In the days that followed the discovery of her body, it was thought that Rachel was the victim of a bungled robbery attempt. It soon emerged, however, that police investigating the case believed Rachel had known her killer and that her murder had been carefully planned months in advance. The spotlight immediately fell upon Rachel’s husband, Joe O’Reilly, who admitted in a number of extraordinary press interviews that he was a prime suspect in his wife’s slaying. The 32-year-old advertising executive vehemently denied any involvement. It was a crime that captured the imagination of the public, who watched as the illusion of the idyllic suburban life the couple shared together began to shatter. Extract from the Suspect WITH THE SOUND of her heart pounding loudly in her ears, Rose Callaly drove as quickly as she could in the direction of her daughter’s home.Gripping the steering wheel tightly, she did her best to calm herself down by going through all of the logical reasons why Rachel O’Reilly might not be answering her telephone. Maybe she was out shopping or visiting a friend and had left her mobile at home by mistake, maybe there was a fault with the line, maybe … Rose shook her head and decided to concentrate on the road instead; it was safer that way. Thankfully traffic was good and within 20 minutes she was parking in the driveway of her daughter’s bungalow, which lay nestled in the picturesque countryside of north Dublin.As she pulled up beside Rachel’s Renault Scenic, which was parked in the same spot she always left it, Rose’s sense of foreboding deepened. If her daughter was at home, why had she not answered the landline or acknowledged any of the many worried messages her family had left for her? Ever since being told that her daughter had failed to pick up her youngest son, Adam, from the crèche earlier that morning, Rose knew from somewhere deep down that something was wrong.But now was not the time to panic; she had to find Rachel. As she turned off the engine of her car, two dogs her daughter was looking after began to jump and bark. Already in a rush to get into the house, she was irritated by the thoughts of trying to stop them following her.As it was, she needn’t have worried—something was already stopping the dogs from entering the house. Walking quickly to the back patio doors of the house, the entrance the family always used, Rose was surprised to find them both wide open. She was even more surprised when she saw that the curtains in the kitchen were drawn, something Rachel would never allow happen during the day.She entered and swiftly scanned the room and although paying little attention, as she was intent on locating Rachel, she did notice there were several items strewn around the floor. She would later recall that she felt ‘someone had taken and actually placed them there.’ She also spotted that the kitchen tap was running but did not stop to turn it off. ‘Rachel, Rachel, where are you love?’ Rose called as she walked into the utility room. There was no sign of her daughter in the small area where the washing machine was kept, so she crossed over into the hallway. Turning to her left, she checked the sitting room; it was a mess, dozens of CDs and DVDs lay strewn on the floor. What had happened? Where was Rachel? Rose began to call louder. ‘Rachel, Rachel are you alright? Answer me love.

    

    The third edition, Obama’s Last Stand, follows the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama as it struggles to find the winning formula in a political landscape that has changed dramatically since his history-making victory in 2008. Though battered and bruised after nearly four years in office, Barack Obama remains the most competitive player on the field in American politics today. In Obama’s Last Stand, POLITICO White House correspondent Glenn Thrush chronicles the efforts of the president and his team to secure a second term in the face of a determined opposition, unfavorable economic headwinds, and a series of missteps by his own team. This is a revealing portrait of the president at the most precarious moment in his political life, with insights and anecdotes drawn straight from the notebook of one of the most perceptive reporters in America. The trash-talking schoolyard athlete in Obama is very much in evidence, especially when he speaks caustically about his Republican rivals, including the man he thinks is trying to steal his legacy, Mitt Romney. Yet apart from Romney and the uncertain economy, Obama’s greatest obstacle on the road to reelection may be Obama 2008. He and his team of talented advisers must try to reconcile their nostalgia for that once-in-a-lifetime campaign with the realities of an election fundamentally altered by the advent of super PACs and the evaporation of Obama’s superstar popularity. That challenge has led a campaign operation that once prided itself on flawless execution of strategy to commit several of the most dangerous unforced errors of Obama’s political career. Yet the game is far from over. If Obama is sometimes his own worst enemy, he also has the talent and drive to reclaim this race. Spurred on by the realistic prospect of losing, and growing ever more impatient with the foibles of his campaign staff, Obama the competitor is gearing up for the most critical fourth quarter of his career. This is the story of the last stand that will either cement his legacy forever—or consign him to a roster of once-promising one-term presidents.

    Edgar Hoover’s FBI to tell the full story—for the first time—of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and the assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers. In an epic feat of storytelling and drawing on a remarkable amount of newly available material on all the major figures involved, Burrough reveals a web of interconnections within the vast American underworld and demonstrates how Hoover’s G-men overcame their early fumbles to secure the FBI’s rise to power.

    Have you ever lit a Marlboro from the ignited gas of a bloated dead man's belly? Joseph Scott Morgan has. Have you ever wept over a dead dog while not giving a shit about the dead owner laying next him? Morgan did. Were you named after a murder victim? Joseph Scott Morgan was.This isn't Hollywood fantasy—it's the true story of a boy born into the deprivations of a white trash trailer park who as an adult gets further involved in the desperate backdoor sagas of the "new South." No hot blondes here, just maggots, grief, and the truth about forensics and death investigation.Joseph Scott Morgan became a death investigator with the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office in suburban New Orleans in 1987, the youngest medicolegal death investigator in the country. During the day, Morgan worked in the morgue, and at night investigated for the coroner. In 1992 Morgan became senior investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office in Atlanta. Morgan is now a college professor at North Georgia College and State University, where he teaches a death investigation course based on the national standards which he helped develop. He and his family reside in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia.

    history.Who really killed little Maria? The question fueled a real-life nightmare in Sycamore, Illinois...1957. Sycamore, Illinois. Christmas was three weeks away, and seven-year-old Maria Ridulph went out to play. Soon after, a figure emerged out of the falling snow. He was very friendly. Minutes later, Maria vanished, leaving behind an abandoned doll and footsteps in the snow.In April, a spring thaw gave up Maria’s body in a nearby wooded area. The case attracted national attention, including that of the FBI and President Eisenhower. In all, seventy-four men and three women fell under suspicion. But no one was ever charged with the crime.Incredibly, fifty-five years later, the coldest case in the history of American jurisprudence would be reopened. It happened after a seventy-four-year-old former neighbor of the Ridulphs named Eileen Tessier made a stunning deathbed confession to her family about a dark past, and a darker secret they knew nothing about. Two families would be joined by despair and retribution, and in an astounding turn of events, Maria Ridulph’s killer would finally be brought to justice. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

    When rumblings about labor unions threatened to destabilize the family's brewery, Adolph Coors, Jr., the septuagenarian president of the company, drew a hard line, refusing to budge. They had worked hard for what they had, and no one had a right to take it from them. What they'd soon realize was that they had more to lose than they could have imagined.On the morning of Tuesday, February 9, 1960, Adolph "Ad" Coors III, the 44-year-old CEO of the multimillion dollar Colorado beer empire, stepped into his car and headed for the brewery twelve miles away. At a bridge he stopped to help a man in a yellow Mercury sedan. On the back seat lay handcuffs and leg irons. The glove box held a ransom note ready to be mailed. His coat pocket shielded a loaded pistol.What happened next set off the largest U.S. manhunt since the Lindbergh kidnapping. State and local authorities, along with the FBI personally spearheaded by its director J. Edgar Hoover, burst into action attempting to locate Ad and his kidnapper. The dragnet spanned a continent. All the while, Ad's grief-stricken wife and children waited, tormented by the unrelenting silence. The Death of an Heir reveals the true story behind the tragic murder of Colorado's favorite son.

    He died in HMP Maghaberry, Northern Ireland, in January 2016, aged sixty-eight, unmourned, and entirely unrepentant of his repellent crimes.These bald facts, horrific as they are, do not begin to scratch the surface of the truth about Robert Black, a Scottish-born serial killer who undoubtedly committed further murders for which he was never tried, both in this country and on the Continent. In this ground-breaking account, Robert Giles, who has spent years tracing the killer’s movements and sifting through all the evidence, including transcripts of the trials, convincingly argues that Black was an habitual serial killer over many years, and quite certainly responsible for more than the four child murders for which he was convicted.Co-written with Chris Clark, a former police intelligence officer whose tireless work into the Yorkshire Ripper produced convincing new evidence of other murders that went unnoticed or unrecorded, The Face of Evil shows once and for all that Robert Black was a serial killer whose crimes went far beyond what is generally believed. In doing so, it paints a portrait of human cruelty at its worst.

    Manson was a career criminal who got his education in the U.S. prison system and learned at an early age that only those who have power over others will survive. Inside you will read about... - Starting the Manson Family - Seeking Fame in Los Angeles - The First Murder - 10050 Cielo Drive - Rosemary and Leno LaBianca - Life and Death Behind Bars And much more! In less than three years, Manson transformed his followers from a group of freedom-loving, LSD-dropping hippies into a pack of blood-thirsty murderers who carried out acts of astounding brutality at his request. For many, August 8, 1969, the day the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate and her guests, marked the end of the Sixties. The Manson Family murder spree shocked the world, and standing silently at the center of it all was one man, Charles Manson.

     Tim Reiterman s Raven provides the seminal history of the Rev. Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple, and the murderous ordeal at Jonestown in 1978. This PEN Award winning work explores the ideals-gone-wrong, the intrigue, and the grim realities behind the Peoples Temple and its implosion in the jungle of South America. Reiterman s reportage clarifies enduring misperceptions of the character and motives of Jim Jones, the reasons why people followed him, and the important truth that many of those who perished at Jonestown were victims of mass murder rather than suicide.This widely sought work is restored to print after many years with a new preface by the author, as well as the more than sixty-five rare photographs from the original volume."

    Anger and grief in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School are palpable in this urgent piece of writing, but no less remarkable are King’s keen thoughtfulness and composure as he explores the contours of the gun-control issue and constructs his argument for what can and should be done.